Twin powers

The ending depends on some unsettling authorial choices. With two sets of twins and the supernatural in play, there are sure to be buried secrets and cases of mistaken identity. Although there are plenty of hints along the way, it may be helpful to draw a chart to track the inevitable reversals. Valentina's plan for escape is fantastical, its execution shocking - all to the author's credit. "Symmetry" rises above concept and into the heady air of artistry, where just about anything is believable.

When Robert began his thesis, he envisioned Highgate as "a prism through which he could view Victorian society at its most sensationally, splendidly, irrationally excessive . . . a theater of mourning, a stage set of eternal repose." In this novel, it is much more than that, a place where the symmetry of a prism yields to the natural and emotional forces that distort the careful plans of cemetery designers and, by extension, anyone who dares to feel. The growth of tree roots raises a gravestone off the ground; a jealous prank changes life (and death) for two generations of twins. Repose is overrated anyway.

Lovers of Niffenegger's past work should rejoice. This outing may not be as blindly romantic as "The Time Traveler's Wife," but it is mature, complex and convincing - a dreamy yet visceral tale of loves both familial and erotic, a search for Self in the midst of obsession with an Other. "Her Fearful Symmetry" is as atmospheric and beguiling as a walk through Highgate itself.

(Edit:Ruby)